The Question of Our Time

"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?"

This was the question posed by abolitionists starting in 1787, originally in England. Were not enslaved Africans human, part of the brotherhood of man?

It was the great question of the 19th century, one America answered with the lives of over 600,000 men in the Civil War, affirming those it held in bondage were indeed fellow humans, born with the same inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness the country was founded on.

And while the full reality of this ideal would not be realized for a century with the Civil Rights Movement, slavery was rightfully headed for the dustbin of history in 1865.

However, just thirteen years before our country answered the question of the 19th century, a new one was starting to be asked, using the same wordage but with a far more diabolical undertone.

"The Communist Manifesto" was published in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two middle-class men claiming the poor and working class were not treated as men and brothers, but instead reduced to cogs in the great capitalist machine grinding all in its path, or grist for its mill.

Was there exploitation and callousness present among the foremen and bosses of early modern industry? Of course.

But whether or not the poor and working class constituted men and brothers was not the true question posed by Marx and Engels.

The actions of their followers -- Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, and others -- demonstrated what was really being asked.

"Why Am I Not Your God and Master?"

This is the real question posed in Marx and Engels' book, and one people of the modern age are still asking.

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One-hundred million people were cruelly murdered in pursuit of satisfying those who asked this question, justifying it as recognizing the poor and working class as men and brothers, even as they frequently were the ones deprived of their humanity and fraternity.

Rather than abandon the question, its askers sought to reframe it.

Some have shamelessly asserted the modern-day descendants of slaves were never told "yes" to the question of being men and brothers. Despite the reality that men and women of all creeds and colors in America have achieved wealth, fame, and positions of power (including President of the United States for two terms), those asking insist they are still being treated unfairly in ways so subtle as to be unfalsifiable.

Others have instead reframed the question through the lens of gender. But because feminism has achieved its original goal of ensuring men and women are treated equally in the workplace and halls of government, gender itself has become a matter of debate, with men who believe themselves to be women asserting that those who do not accommodate this belief are somehow denying their humanity as a whole.

Even those who do not fit into these categories are asking this question in various ways, the most common of which is what we call "virtue signaling."

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And the stated goals and objectives of our self-designated elites, be it those of the World Economic Forum, the Swamp of Washington, and others, are all designed to satisfy the burning question:

"Why Am I Not Your God and Master?"